@jmalonzo sure, the rich do what they can to make sure the tax burden falls as heavily as possible on the poor and middle class, in order to keep taxes unpopular.
but look at it this way: the greater the tax take the government demands, the more it must necessarily fall upon the rich. that’s where the money is!
the rich use their influence to try to insist before it hits us it will hit you! you should hate taxes too!
because they know a high tax state must mostly tax them.
a structural weakness of the Democratic Party relative to the Republican Party is the difference in how corruption is perceived.
corrupt Republicans are bold, cigar-chomping caudillos, unapologetic winners who can’t be bothered with your whining.
but Democrats are always on about “Democracy” and “institutions” and “rule of law”. they can’t embrace corruption like a winner, so their indulgings come off as cagey, hypocritical, obvious but pedantically denied, weak.
how does the market react on the day Treasury announces a premium bonds program or resumption of issuance of consols?
@HamonWry people are mostly nice to one another here. what’s that about?
taxes are the primary weapon that the public wields to tame the rich. that is why the rich work so assiduously to discredit them.
@benmschmidt brilliant!
our butt-hurts calcify into blindspots.
early in Google's existence, they emphasized how their business depends upon a lively open internet. in those early days they mostly seem to foster that.
but now they (and their peer firms) mostly try to keep users on their own properties, to become the intermediary through which any external data is accessed.
an unsafe internet is more supportive of this business model. if it's a dangerous internet, better stick with Google SafeSearch.
so why do you think Google might propose a .zip domain?
@laprice so many of us live in terror of not paying our rent and what would result for our families. being able to stiff people and still be treated like royalty is a signal perq of our ruling bufoonery. see also Trump, Donald J.
[tech notebook] pdfcat as a Scala script https://tech.interfluidity.com/2023/05/20/pdfcat-as-a-scala-script/index.html
bing AI just skyped me to chat. the future is the past. we’ll talk to Skynet via AIM.
i still don't understand why they cost $50,000. seems like it would be a good business, selling bus shelters to LA. cf @Alon https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/05/19/quick-note-los-angeles-spends-50000-per-bus-shelter/
"during the decade-plus in which Uber was pissing away the Saudi royal family's billions subsidizing rides, cities dismantled their public transit, even as residents made decisions about where to live and work based on the presumption that Uber was charging a fair, sustainable price for rides." @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/
florida man used to be weird and dissolute, maybe a bit too good at competing for darwin awards. i liked him better then, before he became a scold and a prude, a reactionary snowflake in the sweltering sun.
it's fine. it's better than fine! i'll sell "my yacht" and pay the taxes and enjoy the rest of my life under considerably less stress than i ever would have imagined. https://mstdn.social/@newsbot/110399666700813261
@edrozenberg That "solves" it. Thanks! So it's "marks" that I can hide or show. I wonder what these marks are intended to signify though...
On the right hand side of my terminal windows — straight MacOS Terminal.app, in a variety of shells and programs — I see faint ']' characters at the right-hand edge. It's subtle, and I've just noticed it now, but I can't figure out what it would be. It's not a ZSH right-hand prompt (it appears in a Scala REPL, for example). Any clues?
@dpp i love your optimism. i share it, at least of the will.
st peter gets tired of explaining, winning isn’t everything. in the scheme of things it is nothing at all.
@dpp i sometimes think the original sin of the internet was our acquiescence to the commercialization of cddb. here it was, this super cooperative thing that we had all built in a spirit of exuberant openness, and somehow we let gracenote or whoever claim the compilation was theirs. in that “digital millennium” era, people were like “yeah, this’ll be good for the internet.” 😱 it was a shocking short road from that moment to dystopia.
